runner bashing

Thats because most people on this site are athletes and held to a higher standard than the overweight, face painted cheesehead sitting at a football game who gets out of breath opening his beer. HE can say somebody sucks and no one will challenge it because its obvious who is better.

As runners saying another runner sucks, whether you've made it to their level or not, is like bashing your competition. Talking a competitor down without backing it up is lame. Sorry dude.

armchair quarterbacks are NOT what make sports great... that's retarded. Sometimes, not being at the same level as those whom people bash is relevant. It's not that being slow is the pain-point, but rather that they don't know what it's like to train that hard, put everything on the line - money, pride, livelihood, etc, and they've never competed at that level. How can people take them seriously when they've really never been in that position? Sure, you all train hard and still try and whatever, but it's not the same as actually being there.

My two cents

Maybe you are an athlete but I am not.

I am however a HUGE fan of road running and track.

I agree with some of brass monkeys points.

You don't need to be an ace at any sport to make criticisms.

The more buzz the better. Like one local politician once told me, "I don't care what they say about me as long as they spell my name right."

I seriously doubt whether the millions of passionate opinionated football fans out there are "overweight, face painted cheeseheads".

I read prissy references to LETSRUN and its posters on other running sites. Some of the stuff here is tough to read, but those other sites don't hold a candle to the wide open format available here.

You need to learn the difference between bashing and criticizing.

If you say, "Runner X has peaked" or "Runner X can't possibly win a medal", or "Runner X ran terribly", then you are criticizing him. This opens you up to debate but has nothing to do with how you can run.

If you say "Runner X sucks" or "It is time for this redneck to pack his bags" then you are BASHING him and deserve to be completely bashed yourself, especially for your comparatively pathetic running achievements

This thread was good. Now it sucks. Thanks moderators.

I agree with that 1st dude. You should be able to run someone down, but what pisses me off is the things people rubbish others for. For example, if someone has a bad race (say alan webb) then a million people jump on here and right him off, even though everyone who runs knows that sometimes it just doesn't happen in a race. That annoys me. I reckon its fair enough to say something like 'Webb is overrated' or 'Webb was soft in that race' but not to right off someone's entire running career based on a single performance.

Basically, you don't need to be the best to pay out on people (or we would have nothing to talk about) but it would be good if people kept it reasonable. This is letsrun though so I know that ain't gonna happen.

That's not "always the defense."

Speaking of Alan Webb. Does anybody else think he's washed up. He'll never run fast again, he just keeps running awful races.

So no pundits should ever be able to make a comment about El G or Bekele because nobody has ever run as fast as them? That makes no sense at all. The only pre-requisit for making a statement about athletics or any other sport should be a basic knowledge of what your talking about so that your comments are worth listening to.

The Ritz bashers have been quiet since Saturday.